Senate Majority PAC raises $11 million

Locked in a heated and already-expensive battle for control of the U.S. Senate, the Democratic group Senate Majority PAC started the fundraising year with a bang, raising $11 million over the first three months of 2014.

Strategists for the outside group – the principal Democratic super PAC spending money in midterm Senate races – said Senate Majority PAC ended the month of March with $8.5 million in the bank. Its total fundraising for the cycle is $19.5 million so far.

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Those numbers are a stark improvement over Democratic super PAC fundraising in the 2012 presidential cycle – a sign that the party’s donors have increasingly accepted the reality of unlimited-money outside groups.

Susan McCue, the co-chair of Senate Majority PAC, said in a statement that Democratic donors have stepped up “to fight back against the torrent of outside spending spearheaded by the Koch Brothers.”

“As the only outside group dedicated solely to protecting the Senate Democratic majority, we are fighting on every front to make sure that we remain competitive against the conservative outside groups trying to buy the U.S. Senate,” said McCue, a former chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

While conservative outside spending – largely from the Koch-backed Americans for Prosperity – still outpaces pro-Democratic spending for 2014, the shape of the outside-money battle has changed meaningfully from 2012.

In the first quarter of that year, Senate Majority PAC raised a paltry $1.7 million as Democratic donors balked at the brave new world of super PACs and politically-oriented nonprofit advertising.

One Senate Majority PAC strategist said that in March, the group spent $2 million in Senate races versus $3 million for AFP. Some of that Democratic money has gone to ads featuring the images of Charles and David Koch, the prolific conservative donors whom Reid has repeatedly assailed by name on the Senate floor.

Other conservative groups, such as American Crossroads, have been slower to join the fray this cycle; despite comparatively slow fundraising, Crossroads recently began airing ads in the North Carolina and Alaska GOP primaries.